In the technical field of communication networks, one of the problems which arises is to find mechanisms for exchanges between routers which are at one and the same time reactive and economical as regards bandwidth used. The difficulty consists in fact in rapidly establishing the topology of the routers, both in the setup phase and in the phase of modifying the components of the network (disappearance, appearance of routers, change of network hookup of the routers), while not flooding the networks with protocol exchanges which may consume a significant part of the available bandwidth.
The state of the art known by the Applicant in this regard relates notably to routing protocols used on the Internet protocol (IP for short) which are defined for example in the RFCs (Requests for Comment) which are a set of documents which make reference to the Internet Community and which describe, specify, aid the implementation, standardize and debate the majority of the standards, norms, technologies and protocols related to the Internet and to networks in general. Among these documents may be cited the experimental protocols defined within the framework of the working groups on mobile networks or Mobile Ad Hoc Networks known to specialists in the Field, or else the standard protocols used for interconnections of wire-based networks.
Despite the effectiveness of these protocols, the tactical-network interconnection topologies currently known in the military field exhibit notably the drawback of exhibiting redundancy of the nodes between networks and of networks between nodes, thereby generating an increase in protocol exchanges.
In the case of low throughput networks (from 1 Kbit/s to a few tens of Kbits/s), the existing protocols known to the person skilled in the art are not designed to optimize the reduction in the quantity of protocol information exchanged, necessary for correct operation of low throughput networks. These protocols in general therefore saturate the bandwidth of VHF radio networks and to a lesser extent that of UHF networks. Likewise, the disregard of the concepts of parallel or redundant networks between nodes gives rise to avalanche phenomena in certain protocols, thereby causing significant traffic.
The protocols mentioned hereinabove do not therefore make it possible to achieve economy of bandwidth. Moreover, the risk of a high rate of losses of potential packets is disregarded by the existing protocols. These protocols do not therefore make it possible to obtain fast convergence while exchanging a small quantity of information.
Patent application WO 2008/055539 discloses a multi-domain network in which each domain of the network collects intra-domain routing information and generates a reduced view of this information available to the other domains of the network.
The following definitions will be used herein:    Waveform: Set consisting of a logical and physical layer making it possible to dispatch information remotely, wirelessly. This includes the coding of the information on the radio pathway as well as the media access protocols and optionally the internal routing protocols.    Wire medium: Set consisting of a logical and physical layer making it possible to dispatch information remotely, by wire.    Physical medium: Generic term designating a waveform or a wire medium.    Transmission network: Pair (physical medium, configuration elements) allowing all the possessors of a given pair to potentially communicate with one another. Such a possessor is called a member of the network.    Elementary network: Set of members of a transmission network which are adjoining at an instant t.    Forwarder: Function whose role is to relay data between local applications and elementary networks, and between elementary networks. The “forwarder” is charged with finding the next NIN or the local application to which to dispatch the data; the associated task is called “forwarding.”    NIN: Network Interconnection Node. Designates any functional entity ensuring the functions necessary for the transmission of data from and to one or more elementary networks.    Transmission network access (TNA): which is charged with transmitting on a physical medium the data to the next NIN.    Adaptation layer: charged with supplementing the services offered by the physical medium, and/or with carrying out the functional adaptations between the services required by the FORWARDER and those offered by the physical medium.    TNA: allows the NIN node to dispatch/receive data over/from the corresponding physical network.    Neighbourhood (of an NIN N): Set of NINs which are reachable by N by traversing one and only one elementary network.    Sig_Neighbourhood: FIRE signalling message which chiefly contains the Neighbourhood of an NIN.    Relay of Sig_Neighbourhood (RSN): NIN which must relay Sig_Neighbourhoods between certain of its neighbours.